Adoption in the time of coronavirus: How Covid-19 is causing delays and a spike in violence
While some parents wait in frustration, others are left struggling to cope without access to support, finds Helen Coffey
“I just fell in love with her as soon as I held her. Everything about her was beautiful.”
Ella* can’t keep the emotion out of her voice as she recounts the first time she met Sophie*, the one-year-old girl she and her wife Phoebe* are in the process of adopting. It was back in February 2020, not long before the severity of the coronavirus outbreak started to become apparent, at an open-day event for prospective adoptive parents. The couple went along just to see what it would be like; they weren’t actually expecting to find a new addition to their family.
“We went in thinking, ‘this is weird, we’re just going to use it as a test’ – but it was an incredible way to meet our child,” says Ella. “It was so much better than just going through kids’ profiles.”
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